DIY or TO?

A snowHead

Sorry if this is a chestnut...

Never done DIY ski trip. If I can get a European week with a TO for, say, around £350-£400pp inc. accom & flight & transfer, is there a real financial or other benefit to booking it all separately (which feels like a lot more potential or actual online work, time & hassle) with (I understand) maybe less overall protection or required or available assistance (in resort and as regards accommodation, flight issues etc) if things go wrong?
OK, less resort choice maybe? Presume lift pass, equipment carriage etc are same cost either way.
Where, why, when does the break-even point change?

BTW this relates to a couple in basic s/c or b&b accommodation, any time of season, usually flying from Manchester or other Northern/Midlands airports.

Cheers. Smile

A snowHead

@Grizzler, £350 sounds like a deal. DIY works for me on peak weeks as you can save 1000 Euros on an apartment, and have the whole transfer van ( 6 people) which seems to work. If you can go when TO;s need bums in seats, you can control the costs as they want you. Me at half term or New Year , not so worried as they have people queuing up to pay top dollar. Its not like I am going to risk a last minute booking is it?

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

I did a DIY trip by myself to Chatel in January this year and it worked out at about £300 for flights(BA including luggage)/transfers/SC accom for the week. The accommodation was far from basic either.

Had I shared the accommodation with somebody else (it had a double bed), it would have worked out at around £220 each.

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Have a look on Sunweb for serious rock bottom prices, but often work for groups no couples.

£300 sounds brilliant, I miss the cheap holidays.

Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

£350-400 per person would be difficult to achieve DIY easily, assuming that you want to travel weekend to weekend, although it does depend on numbers. I find the cost of transfers is quite often the killer with DIY, it can cost more that the flights.

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There is a time and place ..
Tour Ops will chage a fortune at top of season
Half Term
Christmas
New Year
Easter

But in the depths of January they may have seats & beds to fill, then the bargains are ripe a few days before.
If you are in a group you cant do that.
But its good fun trying to work out all the permutations.

After all it is free

@hammerite, you have to pay for baggage with BA too.

Perhaps i'm a bit spoilt living near Gatwick, but I've rarely paid more than £100 for a return flight from Gatwick to Geneva (with baggage, Saturday to Saturday, obviously outside of school holidays). Granted I don't have my own skis.

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@mikeycharlton, if you're stuck with Ryanair or Easyjet the baggage costs can be £60 return, it means you really have to time it right to get truly cheap flights.

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@mikeycharlton,
You pay for baggage with BA, but you get a massive cabin allowance (enough for a weeks clothes) and you can take your skis (and a friends pair) as your hold bag.

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I'd generally say going the TO route is cheaper for most people - but only if you want the whole package.

Yes, if you're one of the organised people (who only has organised friends/family) you can book everything at the best/cheapest times and undercut the TO's package for the same thing/better. If you only start thinking about skiing on that first morning you wake up and it's still dark, have to hurd cat-like friends to decided on dates/resorts/accomodation, etc so are faced with paying top dollar for everything the TO will probably be cheaper.

Of course if you don't really want the whole flight/transfer/accomodation package you're being bound by limitations you don't have booking DIY. DIY you can drive rather than fly, giving you a much bigger baggage allowence. Flying and hiring a car means you can stop at a supermarket out of resort and avoid paying resort rates. Etc.

I've only ever done DIY as I can chose the resort, airport, airline, flight times etc. And in a strange way I like doing all the research.

You know it makes sense.

There is no simple answer to this. It depends. There's vastly more choice of accommodation and resorts if you DIY. The most luxurious holidays, as well as some of the most basic, can't be bought "off the shelf".

Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:

@Themasterpiece +1, I like being in charge of and responsible for all our own arrangements and not beholden to a TO’s configuration, thus for me a TO would have to be materially cheaper for me to want to go that route.
a) We like to choose specific flight times, transport arrangement etc that suit me best (often gaining a day or 2 skiing). A 7pm flight on a Friday gets me more skiing, or 3pm on a Saturday means the kids can do their morning activities before we go to the airport.
b) We sometimes book flights without knowing our work commitments, so move things around a lot (I probably changed around a dozen flights over the last couple of seasons) – this is very hard to do with a tour operator.
c) If something goes wrong I’m not relying on a rep who has to sort out 200 other people at the same time. E.g. if my flight is cancelled or heavily delayed, I can get online and sort out my own replacement. I can't think of a scenario where I'd rather have a TO trying to fix the problem.

These are all fairly intangible and for many it is hassle/risk rather than the freedom that I feel I get. If I was trying to link up local trains in China, where I don’t speak the language, can’t read the timetable nor do I understand the system, I’d probably want someone else doing it for me.

A snowHead

You can't beat a last-minute, half-brochure-price £250-350 Chalet deal that includes flights, transfers, bed, food and wine for value by trying to DIY, but DIY may be better if any/all of the following apply...

1. If there are more than 2 of you, certainly more than 4, it can be difficult to find a deal.
2. If you're fussy about exactly where you want to go.
3. If you need to book time off from work in advance (the best deals generally only appear in the week before departure).
4. If you need to go in peak weeks such as New Year, Feb Half-term.
5. If you want to do something different to the Sat-Sat, 6 days skiing standard package.
6. If you don't mind the hassle of booking all the elements separately and are prepared for the risk of unforeseen problems disrupting your plans.

A snowHead

I know you are talking about a couple, but as a single traveller, I have never been able to match TO prices for a similar trip - though I am talking mid January trips to Austria usually.

As @hammerite said above, it is often the transfers that make the difference. I have been able to price up flights (including baggage) and hotel accommodation for about the same as a package, but then the transfers on top make it uneconomic, even using shared shuttle transfers (such as http://www.andis-taxi.com/en/shuttle.php ) from Salzburg to the main resorts (e.g. Kitzbuhel) are of the order of €35-45 each way.

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

I didn't realise that you have to choose one or the other. I look at all options Tour operators - there are lots of these to trawl through - and various combinations of DIY. If you find a TO offering a trip to a resort you want to go to in accomodation you want and from an airport near you for a good price then take it. If on the otherhand you want to go out on a Thursday, self drive and call in to see friends on the way then do it yourself. It is all pretty easy.
These days I find it fairly easy to tell those pesky reps trying to sell you a night out in the local cheese factory (which is where they make there money) to go away.

Oh as a tip when using a TO always buy your own lift pass. there is far less oppurtunity for a mistake to be made.

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Always do DIY, but mainly due to the nature of the group, people have differing commitments and also want different things from the trip so DIY gives us the flexibility that a TO simply can't offer

Saying that it is a lot more hassle, but that's what the summer is for when there's no snow!

Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

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I often find if you can be imaginative with transfers rather than just usuing transfer companies, then getting to/from resort can be cheap. From airports such as Salzburg its just a short bus ride to the train station, then the train from there to somewhere such as Kitzbuhel/Zell am See is pretty cheap. 8-15euros. Yeah it will be slower than a direct shared taxi/minibus from airport to door, but time for me isn't the limiting factor. Also in the past I've gotten on the same coaches the TO's use for 10-15 euros.

Also if you are a group of 4+ then hiring a car is definitely cheaper than using private transfer companies. Even if you only use it to get to and from the resort.

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After all it is free

@Grizzler, DIY every time, its not just about the price, in fact its everything not about the price. TO's treat you like a numpty, aren't generally flexible on transfers, stay in accommodation that is tired ime, treat the locals on the whole badly by screwing them down on price, and you end up surrounded by Brits and not speaking to the locals in native tongue. Haven't used a TO for 20 years and will never do again. Don't get me going on ski reps, they are on the whole a joke! wink

Ever see anyone but Brits using TO's in resort, can't think I have?

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We mix it up. Sometimes we have no preference of where we go, so we just look around the TOs to see what we can get, we also look at what we can get DIY. Sometimes we have a preference of where we want to go and look at both options. Of our last five trips only one has been with a TO. The next one we've booked already with a TO.

The rep was fine. She left us alone all week apart from the first day when I questioned her about the lift passes on the bus, I knew what I could get if I bought them myself, turns out she could do exactly the same and even confirmed what the exchange rate would be if we bought with her. We were in resort by 11am and I knew I could use the lifts from 3pm. We went to lunch, she went to get the lift passes and actually came to find us where we were having lunch to get the lift passes to us in plenty of time for an afternoon ski. I tend to find that reps just let you get on with things if they know you know what you're doing.

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I've done both, when kids were at school it was invariably far cheaper DIY'ing than using a TO, at other times it varies, I had an excellent and very reasonable trip to a pleasant hotel in Courmayeur courtesy of Crystal. For ability of timing and a dislike of some of the very early rises beloved of TO's mean I still DIY more frequently.

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It all depends, DIY for New Year normally and shorter than a week trips. Really hard to get a good deal for 4 or more at New Year or for short breaks. But at Easter we have found TO deals that I could never match. 7 nights in the Tirolerhof in Mayrhofen £550. Flights to Munich are £200 plus at Easter normally (from Edinburgh). Transfer and 4* HB for £350, result.

Apart from raw cash, you might prefer to DIY if you want to ski for more or less than 6 days, if you want to fly at a time or on a day of your choosing, if you want private transfers to avoid hanging around in an airport, or if you're not happy with the choice of accommodation available through TOs.

You know it makes sense.

Or the choice of resorts. British TOs are only active in a handful of ski resorts.

Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:

A snowHead

Or to put it another way: in the afternoon a fellow human, quite possibly at the start of his first season as a rep who had also likely been up since before dawn hurding people on and off of transfer buses made a simple mistake when buying the passes.

At a guess at least one of the clients who were getting angry about it would have made the same or a similar mistake if they'd bought their own lift passes on arrival day or possibly lost the same 30min it took to sort out queueing up to buy their pass on the Sunday morning.

A snowHead

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

@johnE, then you have not recently skied in any sort of high season in any of Argentiere, Champoluc nor the Grand Massif.

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Yes, Champoluc, Flaine, Les Arcs, Tignes, etc. at New Year, which I beleive is the highest season

Help!!

DIY or TO?

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